13th Panzer Division

The 13th Panzer Division was an armored division of the German Wehrmacht which existed from 11 October 1940 to January 1945. The division originated as a motorized infantry division, but it was redesignated after the invasion of France in 1940, and the division fought on the eastern front of World War II against the Soviet Union. The division suffered heavy losses in 1943 and 1944, and the division was partially refitted upon its retreat into Hungary in 1944. Gerhard Schmidhuber, the division's commander, was appointed the supreme German commander in Hungary after Nazi Germany's occupation of Hungary. On 11 February 1945, Schmidhuber was killed in action during the Siege of Budapest, and the 13th Panzer Division was destroyed by the Soviet Red Army in Budapest.